Creeping over fields of green Remembering the
faces The moments unseen The hands that built
a dynasty The vision in their eyes Echoes in
the auction bar Beneath an endless sky This is
the bull buy Turn the bar Imagine, for a second,
a bachelor farmer's 35 -year test of patience.
Yeah, that's a long time to wait for a payoff.
Right. And then picture a World War II boxer.
A guy who literally fought Jack Dempsey, stepping
out of the ring and bringing all that relentless
grit straight into the milking parlor. Which
is just a wild visual. It really is. Throw in
a half million dollar bidding war that sounds
way more like Wall Street in the 1980s than our
rural livestock auction. Oh, the 80s investor
craze. Total chaos. Pure chaos. And to top it
all off, imagine a bankrupt investor's empty
liquid nitrogen tank that... completely by accident,
mind you, altered the genetic trajectory of an
entire breed. It's crazy when you put it all
together like that. So what do all these things
have in common? Well, they are the messy, totally
unlikely, and deeply human engines that actually
built the modern dairy cow. Yeah. Welcome to
the Deck Dive. Today we're exploring a seriously
fascinating piece of agricultural history. It's
based on this incredibly detailed article called
Matriarchs of the Breed, Seven Cows That Built
Holsteins. And our mission today is really to
just unpack how, how... Just seven, literally
seven franchise cows became the biological foundation
that completely reshaped the global Holstein
breed. Seven cows out of millions. Out of millions.
We're going to look past the, you know, the multi
-million dollar sire indexes and the heavily
marketed bull studs. Right. The stuff that gets
all the flashy magazine ads. Exactly. And we
want to prove that the true secret to generational
success in the dairy industry isn't... Well,
it isn't always found on some mathematically
perfected spreadsheet. No, the real power, the
enduring legacy, it's hiding in the maternal
line. It's all about the cow families. Absolutely.
And if you are out there right now, like maybe
you're listening to this in your truck, heading
down a gravel road, or you're sitting in the
cab of a tractor doing field work, or hell, maybe
you're just gearing up for the afternoon milking.
Yeah, right in the thick of it. This deep dive
is going to fundamentally challenge how you view
value. It's going to challenge how you think
about long -term investments. It might make you
look twice at the hidden potential sitting right
in front of you in your own barn. Seriously?
Because the story of these seven cows is a literal
masterclass in strategy, luck, and just defying
conventional wisdom. So much defying of conventional
wisdom. Okay, let's unpack this. To understand
how a single cow can build an empire, we have
to start with the matriarch, who essentially
set the gold standard for what a cow family could
achieve. Right, the one that started it all.
And really, the single photograph that introduced
her to the world, we're talking about Glyneridge
Citation Roxy. Ah, Roxy. The queen. The queen
of the breed. But the environment that produced
Roxy is... It's so vital to understanding her
impact. Yeah, totally. Because it's 1968 and
we are in Grenfell, Saskatchewan. Which, if you
know anything about the geography of the North
American Holstein power structure. It's nowhere
near it. It is so remote. It's about as remote
as you can possibly get. It's this quiet, isolated
farm run by Lorne Leverage. Right. And his family
had been farming there for generations. Like
his grandfather milked Ayrshires. His dad switched
to Holsteins back in the 20s. And Lorne takes
over in 57. And he changes the farm prefix to
Glenridge. Right. He just puts his head down
and goes to work. And out of that isolation comes
Roxy. Yeah, and her genetic background is such
a fascinating study in stacked pedigrees. Break
that down for us a bit. Sure. So her sire was
Roseph Citation R, and her dam was a star -brewed
cow, meaning her mother had already proven her
ability to transmit really superior genetics
to multiple offspring. Okay, so a solid foundation.
Very solid. Roxy actually had two close crosses
to a legendary bull named ABC Reflection Sovereign.
Oh, wow. But the most interesting biological
quirk, and this is super important later, was
a hidden red factor in her genetics. OK, let's
pause on that red factor for a second, because
in a primarily black and white breed like the
Holstein, recessive traits are a huge deal. They're
massive. It's basic Mendelian genetics, sure,
but it plays out over decades. Since the red
coat color is recessive, a cow has to inherit
the gene from both parents for it to physically
show up, right? Exactly. So Roxy herself was
black and white. But she was quietly carrying
this red gene, just passing it down completely
invisibly, generation after generation. Just
waiting for the exact right mating to suddenly,
like, explode into the population. Which is so
cool. But that invisible potential aside, what
wasn't invisible was her physical presence. No,
she was a stunner. When the classifiers came
to the farm. And these are the officials who
evaluate a cow's physical conformation against
the ideal standard. Right. They evaluate feet,
legs, udder attachment, dairy capacity on a 1
to 100 scale. And when they saw Roxy, they were
just stunned. They were at 96 points initially,
right? Yeah, 96. And later they elevated her
to 97 points. I mean, to give that some context,
achieving a 97 in the late 1960s was structurally
so much harder than it is today. Oh, infinitely
harder. They didn't have modern nutritional science
or total mixed rations or the genomic predictability
we rely on now. They were winging it compared
to today. So to get a 97 -point cow back then
meant you had bred an animal whose structural
architecture was so biologically sound, so naturally
flawless. That she could maintain perfect form
while producing just massive amounts of milk.
Right. And the classifiers who scored her, Andy
Claussen and Avery Stafford, They had looked
at roughly half a million cows between the two
of them over their career. Half a million cows.
Let that sink in. And they both stated she was
the closest thing to physical perfection they
had ever laid eyes on. Which leads to this massive,
massive sliding doors moment for the industry.
Oh man, this part is wild. Two titans of the
dairy world, Doug Blair of Alta Genetics and
Lowell Lindsay. a major sire procurement officer,
travel all the way up to Saskatchewan. They make
the trek. They make the trek. They see her. They
recognize her absolute brilliance. They even
discuss buying her together. And then? And then
they walk away. Wait, what? They passed on her.
Because Lauren Leverage's asking price was too
high. Hold on. That makes zero financial sense
to me. I know. It sounds crazy. If these guys
have evaluated half a million cows and they finally
find, quote unquote, the perfect one, how do
they justify walking away over a few thousand
dollars? That's hard to grasp now. Yeah. Were
they just being cheap or were they seeing a risk
we aren't factoring in today? Like if she's perfect,
isn't any price worth it? It really comes down
to the stark reality of risk assessment in a
pre -technological era. Okay, unpack that. Yes,
she was perfect, but she was just one living,
breathing, fragile animal. In the late 1960s,
the mechanisms for mass -producing a cow's genetics
simply did not exist on a commercial scale. Oh,
right. No mass cloning or anything? Exactly.
If you pay an exorbitant, record -breaking price
for one cow, and she twits her stomach or gets
struck by lightning or simply fails to breed
back... Your entire investment is gone. Total
loss. Total loss. Blair and Lindsay were calculating
biological risk. What they couldn't foresee was
the massive technological leap that was about
to hit the industry. Which brings us to Bob Miller.
Yes, Bob Miller. And he's not a massive corporate
syndicate. He's a part -time livestock photographer
from Illinois looking for a cow family with type,
production, and longevity. And he gets hired
to photograph Roxy in 1973. He looks through
the lens, sees exactly what Blair and Lindsay
saw, but he makes a totally different calculation.
He goes all in. Within a year, he buys her and
moves her down to Dundee, Illinois. And here
is where Miller makes a historic... frankly terrifying
gamble. He puts Roxy on an embryo transfer, or
ET, program. Now today, ET is standard practice,
right? You administer hormones to a donor cow
so she super ovulates. You breed her and then
you non -surgically flush the fertilized embryos
out of her uterus to implant into surrogate heifers.
Standard stuff today. But in the early 1970s.
Wild West. Absolute Wild West. It was incredibly
expensive, highly unpredictable. And in many
early cases, it required invasive surgery to
retrieve the embryos. So you were taking a profound
risk with your most valuable animal. You were
literally betting the farm on unproven science.
It's a staggering financial and biological risk.
But for Miller, the gamble pays off in a way
that reshapes the breed. Because of ET, Roxy
doesn't just produce the typical, what, five
or six calves a cow might have in her lifetime.
Right. She produces 30 offspring. 30. And she
becomes the very first cow in the world to have
10 daughters classify excellent. And she eventually
hits 16 excellent daughters. The geometric progression
of her genetics is staggering from there. Yeah,
run those numbers for us. So those 16 daughters
produced 34 excellent daughters. Those 34 produced
52. By 2004, there were 50 direct maternal lines
of four or more generations of excellence descending
from her. It's like finding an unknown garage
band in Saskatchewan, bringing them to Chicago,
and watching them produce 50 platinum albums.
That's a great way to look at it. They literally
just kept writing checks your herd could cash.
But what makes a Roxy story so compelling isn't
just the biology, right? It's how her genetics
behaved in the messy reality of the marketplace.
Oh, absolutely. Take her daughter, Mill Armore
Roxette. Yeah, let's talk about Roxette. In 1977,
Bob Miller consigns her to a sale in Ohio. She
sells for $25 ,000 to Peter Heffering of Hanover
Hill Farms. Which was a... good chunk of change.
But Miller almost backed out of the deal entirely.
He didn't realize it was structured on investor
terms. Wait, what does that mean, investor terms?
He was getting a third of the cash down and the
rest paid out over two years. He probably thought
he was getting swindled by a slick financing
trick. He absolutely did. He hated the terms.
But that misunderstood, messy $25 ,000 deal ended
up being a foundational moment for Hanover Hill.
Because Roxette goes to their farm, lives into
her late teens, produces over 100 pregnancies
through ET, leaves 13 excellent daughters, and
single -handedly adds over $2 million to Hanover
Hill's coffers. She became a genetic fountainhead.
$2 million from one heifer. And her descendants
didn't just look pretty in a show ring. They
went to Germany. They topped indexes for somatic
cell count, fertility, and longevity. They were
just robust. There's a quote from Mary Briggs
in the source material that perfectly captures
the Roxy ethos. She says, They just go along
doing their business. No drama. No drama at all.
Wide rear ends, sound feet, and they milk like
freight trains. When Roxy finally died in 1984
at 16 years old, she had a lifetime production
of nearly 210 ,000 pounds of milk. She proved
that a cow could be stunningly beautiful and
still be the hardest worker in the barn. Now,
the transition from Roxy to our next matriarch
is a literal masterclass in contrast. Yeah. Completely
different worlds. Roxy's story was driven by
international buyers, professional photography,
and the rapid acceleration of embryo transfer
technology. Very high -tech, fast -paced. But
world -class genetics can also be forged through
the exact opposite approach. We are moving from
the high -tech world of E .T. to a quiet kitchen
table in Wisconsin. Where greatness was built
through decades of solitary, stubborn patience.
We are talking about Bob Snow and Snow N. Denise's
Delia. Let me paint this picture for you because
it is the quintessential... farmer story. Bob
Snow is a bachelor farmer. His neighbors describe
him as nobody's fool. A sober, prudent, incredibly
thoughtful man. Okay. It's the last week of July,
1970. He's sitting in his kitchen while his mother
makes lunch, and he's thumbing through the dairy
magazines. He spots an ad for a dispersal sale,
the Adolph Boerge sale, about 125 miles away.
And Snow doesn't like to waste gas or time, right?
No. So he makes a strict rule for himself before
he even picks up his keys. He says, I am not
interested in the middle or the bottom. If I
go, I only buy off the top. And he executes that
plan flawlessly. He buys three head that day.
But the true genius of Bob Snow wasn't the initial
purchase. No, it was the 35 -year architectural
project he embarked on afterward. 35 years. Most
people can't stick to a diet for 35 days. Right.
But Snow utilized an alternating sire philosophy,
and this is a crucial biological concept. Let's
get into the weeds on that. Okay, so if he had
a cow that was a bit frail but produced massive
amounts of milk, a very dairy cow, he bred her
to a strength sire. And strength sires were bulls
known for transmitting big bones, wide chest,
deep barrels, right? Exactly. Because if you
just keep breeding dairy to dairy, the animal
eventually becomes too frail to support her own
udder. The structural integrity breaks down under
the metabolic stress of milk production. Precisely.
And conversely, if you breed strength to strength
for too long, you get a coarse, heavy cow that
doesn't produce enough milk to pay your feed
bill. So snow alternated. Strength, then dairy.
Strength than dairy. He never chased the hot
index bull of the year. He bred for absolute
functional balance. And this meticulous, slow
-burn, 35 -year plan culminates when he breeds
a powerfully strong cow named Denise to a refined
high milk bull named Walkway Chief Mark. And
the result, born in 1986, is a black heifer calf
named Snow Nen, Denise's Delia. And Delia becomes
the centerpiece of one of the most tense cinematic
showdowns in the history of the show ring. It
really is like a movie scene. It's the Wisconsin
Championship Show. Frank Reagan, a breeder from
Reagan Crest Farms out in Iowa, is only standing
by the ring because it rained that morning and
he couldn't chop his hay. Talk about luck. He
sees this black two -year -old cow step into
the arena and he just stops dead. He sees what
35 years of Bob Snow's patience actually looks
like in the flesh. And Reagan becomes obsessed.
Completely. He follows Snow back to the barn,
asks for a price. and is basically told she isn't
for sale, or rather, the price is astronomical.
But Reagan can't let it go. He drives up to Snow's
farm over and over. A bidding war essentially
starts between the two of them. Which is so funny.
One guy bidding against himself, basically. Pretty
much. Snow sets the price at $10 ,000, and every
few visits, as Reagan showed more interest, Snow
quietly bumps it up by $5 ,000. That is ruthless.
Right. Before long, the price tag is north of
$50 ,000. $50 ,000 for a cow in the early 90s.
Yeah, huge money. And they finally strike a deal
right before the 1991 Wisconsin Spring Show.
Regan buys her, but Snow retains ownership until
the show is over. Now, put yourself in Regan's
boots for a second. You just dropped over $50
,000 on a single animal. The pressure has to
be immense. And then the night before the show,
disaster strikes. Delia looks empty. Oh, no.
This is a nightmare scenario for a showman. Total
nightmare. She has a flawless udder, but her
body is shallow. She lacks the deep, sweeting
rib that judges look for to indicate dairy capacity.
She looks like a greyhound, not a champion dairy
cow. Regan goes into full panic mode. I would
too. He starts buying grassy hay, alfalfa, a
bag of calf feed. He is desperately mixing grain,
trying to get her to fill out. And Snow comes
over. Remember, Snow is calm as can be and tells
him she likes warm water with her beet pulp.
Now, the mechanics of feeding beet pulp are fascinating.
Yeah, explain how that works. Dried beet pulp
acts like a sponge. When a cow eats it and drinks
warm water, the pulp expands massively inside
the rumen. It physically stretches the cow's
digestive tract, dropping her ribs down and pushing
her barrel out. Creating that massive depth of
body. Exactly. But you can literally feel the
tension in that barn. It's late at night, the
lights are buzzing, and Reagan is hand -feeding
this $50 ,000 investment. Praying, the biology
responds by morning. And by 10 o 'clock the next
morning, the hay and the beet pulp have done
their job. Her ribs expand. She fills her barrel.
A crowd actually starts gathering just to stare
at her. She walks out and wins grand champion.
And Bob Snow, the quiet bachelor farmer, has
to back his car into the arena just to load up
all the trophies. And people were actually disgruntled.
Oh, they are mad. The establishment breeders
were annoyed that a nobody bachelor farmer just
walked in and cleaned house. But the trophies
are kind of irrelevant compared to the ripple
effect Delia had on the industry. What Regencrest
built with Delia's genetics is staggering. She
produced 76 registered daughters. Wow. 44 of
her sons were sampled by artificial insemination
companies. Three of those sons, Durham, Dundee,
and Derry, became gold medal sires that flooded
the global market. Durham alone shifted the entire
landscape of the breed. You cannot walk onto
a modern dairy farm today without finding duum
genetics in the pedigree. But what did those
genetics actually do for the farmer in the tractor?
Right, the practical application. Scott Culbertson
from Select Sires noted that Delia's family produced
trouble -free, everyday cows. They didn't cause
drama. They had great udders, they bred back
easily, and they just blended into the herd and
worked. Culbertson argued... that Delia's impact
sent more actual profit back into everyday farmers'
pockets across the world than any other cow in
history. And Delia herself embodied that rugged
resilience, right? Oh my goodness, yes. Two months
after Reagan took her home to Iowa, she started
kicking at her belly. She was in severe distress.
Okay. The veterinarian opened her up and pulled
three gallons of sand out of her stomach. Three
gallons? How does a cow even eat three gallons
of sand? Well, because Bob Snow's farm in Wisconsin
was sandy. And she had spent her early life drinking
from a creek where she'd stir up the sand and
ingest it over years. That is insane. The biological
fortitude required to survive massive abdominal
surgery to remove 70 pounds of wet sand from
your digestive tract. Bounce right back and live
to be almost 15 years old. It's unbelievable.
Delia proves that patience, ignoring the fads,
and focusing on breeding trouble -free, structurally
sound working cows builds generational wealth.
Bob Snow wasn't breeding for a magazine cover.
He built a biological machine that could survive
surgery and still produce 180 ,000 pounds of
milk. But if Bob Snow's methodical 35 -year plan
is one end of the spectrum, the environment that
birthed our next matriarch was the exact opposite.
Night and day difference. We are stepping out
of the quiet Wisconsin kitchen and into an era
of pure financial chaos, absolute madness and
a stroke of pure dumb luck. We have to talk about
the 1980s investor era and Stuckey Elm Park Black
Rose. Let's set the scene. To understand Black
Rose, you really must understand the economic
landscape of 1980s agriculture. You had outside
capital pouring into registered Holsteins, primarily
as tax shelters for wealthy investors who didn't
know the first thing about farming. Syndicates
were forming everywhere. Prices were inflating
to absurd bubble -level extremes. And right in
the middle of this frenzy is a man named Jack
Stuckey. $275 ,000 on those notorious investor
terms. A fraction down. The rest promise later.
And Stuckey just goes on an absolute rampage,
right? He's buying the top cows at every sale,
taking home premier exhibitor banners, living
like a king. But the source material details
this incredible, terrifying, behind -the -scenes
chaos. There were rumors of the mafia getting
involved when the money dried up. The mafia.
Yeah. There's stories about angry investors literally...
dynamiting the porch off Stuckey's house. Dynamiting
a porch over cows? That is wild. The reality
of the collapse was a classic devastating financial
implosion. Stuckey's office floor was literally
covered in two feet of unpaid bills. Two feet.
He was charging syndicates $750 ,000 for cows
he had purchased for a third of that price. When
the tax laws shifted and the returns vanished,
the investors stopped paying him. which meant
he couldn't pay the original breeders. It ended
in a massive, ugly bankruptcy. The cattle were
seized and locked down by a bankruptcy trustee.
And enter Louis Prange. Right. Prange had actually
owned Speckle years before and sold her. Now
he's got a client in Brazil who desperately wants
high -end embryos. Prange knows Stuckey's elite
herd is sitting in legal limbo, eating feed but
generating no revenue. So he drives to Indiana,
negotiates a lease for a dozen of these bankrupt
cows directly from the trustee, and starts an
embryo flushing program. Prange strikes a very
pragmatic deal. He pays the expenses, keeps the
male calves, and splits the proceeds of the females
with the bank and Stuckey. But Stuckey, even
in the middle of total financial ruin, insists
on one condition. Yep, the calves have to carry
his farm prefix. He's bankrupt, but his pride
demands the Stuckey name remains on the pedigree.
And here is where biology and luck... completely
collide. Prange wants to breed Speckle to a heavily
demanded bull named Blackstar. But Stooky, exercising
his last bit of control, absolutely refuses.
He demands they use his preferred bull, Roseaf
Citation R. They argue bitterly over this. Finally,
Prange throws his hands up and says, fine, send
me the Citation R semen. You have to picture
the phone call that happens a few days later.
The phone rings. It's Stooky. And he has to admit,
I can't send you the semen, Louie. My semen tank
ran dry. Let's explain the mechanics of that
real quick. Bull semen is stored in specialized
tanks filled with liquid nitrogen, keeping it
at negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don't
continually top off the nitrogen, it slowly evaporates.
Once the tank goes dry, the temperature rises
and the semen dies. It is completely useless.
So because of a neglected maintenance chore,
because Jack Stuckey forgot to refill his nitrogen
tank amidst the chaos of his bankruptcy, Pranz
goes ahead and uses Blackstar anyway. And the
result of that mating? is Stuckey Elm Park Black
Rose. If that tank had been full, the entire
trajectory of the Holstein breed would have been
completely different. Black Rose emerges quite
literally from the wreckage. In 1991, she is
sold as an 18 -month -old heifer for a mere $5
,400 to a trio of buyers, Mark Rueth, Mark Van
Mersbergen, and the Schaaf family. And what happens
next is just extraordinary. She develops into
an absolute powerhouse, becoming All -American
as a two -year -old, a three -year -old, and
Reserve All -American as a five -year -old and
an aged cow. But she wasn't just an empty showpiece.
She produced two lactations over 40 ,000 pounds
of milk. Which is huge! Yet she was largely ignored
by the pure index breeders, the guys running
the mathematical formulas, because her numbers
didn't fit their narrow criteria. But her physical
credentials were undeniable. She became the number
one type cow in the entire breed. By 2004, she
had produced 30 excellent sons and daughters.
Her sons' bulls like Kite, Red Marker, and Big
Sky were utilized heavily because they brought
a massive infusion of physical substance, width,
and strength back into a breed that was becoming
dangerously frail. And remember Roxy's hidden
red factor we talked about? Right, Black Rose
carried red genetics too, which exploded generations
later with descendants like Lavender Ruby Red
Rose Red. Who became the supreme champion at
World Dairy Expo. There is such a deep poetic
irony to the Black Rose story. Jack Stuckey loses
everything. The source mentions he eventually
leaves the cattle business entirely, goes to
work as a hospital administrator, and dies a
minister in 2007. He never made it back to the
show ring. But his name? That demanded Stuckey
prefix lives on in elite pedigrees all over the
globe, attached to some of the greatest cows
to ever walk the earth. All because of an empty
tank. It is a stark reminder that while the industry
tries to engineer perfection in a sterile lab,
sometimes the greatest biological assets are
born from absolute, unpredictable chaos. Chaos
and luck. So we've looked at the perfectly planned
35 -year masterpiece with Delia, and we've looked
at the happy accident born of bankruptcy with
Black Rose. Both dominated the show ring with
flawless aesthetics. The next two matriarchs
we need to dive into prove that true foundational
greatness doesn't always wear a grand champion
ribbon. Sometimes greatness is just plain ugly.
Sometimes it just puts its head down and grinds
it out in the milking parlor. This brings us
to Plushonsky, Chief Faith, and Ricecrest, Southwind
Kay. Let's start with Faith and the man who bred
her. Charlie Plushansky. Because the environment
shapes the cow. And Charlie Plushansky's environment
was forged in combat. Charlie is a character
right out of a novel. He's a World War II Marine.
He's a competitive boxer. The article specifically
highlights a story where he was fighting in a
ring and the match had to be stopped by none
other than boxing legend Jack Dempsey. Jack Dempsey?
Jack Dempsey literally had to put the gloves
on himself to knock out the winner. When you
go through experiences like the Marine Corps
and fighting in front of Jack Dempsey, you don't
return to a dairy farm in Pennsylvania with a
fragile worldview. No, you don't. Charlie brought
his boxer's grit right into the breeding program.
His philosophy was entirely contrarian to the
elite show ring culture, wasn't it? Completely.
Plushansky didn't care about pretty cows. He
had zero interest in flash or aesthetics. He
selected heavy -duty, ugly, massive production
bowls. He understood the mechanical requirements
of extreme milk production. He wanted incredibly
deep barrels to process massive amounts of feed.
He wanted thick, functional legs that could physically
hold up under the immense weight of a heavily
engorged udder. He was breeding for fighters.
Exactly. So when Charlie bred Plushansky Chief
Faith, she wasn't bred to win ribbons, but she
was a biological tank. She eventually scored
EX 94, but more importantly, she produced over
242 ,000 pounds of milk in her lifetime. And
the elite breeders quickly realized what he had
built. Big names in the industry, guys like Charlie
Backus and Pete Heffering, came to his farm and
tried desperately to buy her. But Plushansky
absolutely refused to sell. He wouldn't budge.
Because for Plushansky, it wasn't about cashing
in for a quick payday. It was about proving the
absolute superiority of his contrarian philosophy.
And he proved it on a global scale. The chief
faith family began to completely dominate the
national locator list. Let's explain the locator
list for the audience really quick. A good idea.
Before modern genomics, the industry used the
locator list to identify the highest -producing
cows in the country based on their genetic potential
for yield. It was the absolute gold standard
for production traits. And by 1996, four of the
top 20 animals on that entire national list were
direct descendants of Chief Faith. Because of
this undeniable proof of production, his cattle
became a massive export commodity, particularly
to Japan. The Japanese market wasn't interested
in American showering politics. They wanted exactly
what Plushansky had built. Relentless, heavy
-duty, problem -free milk production. But if
Plushansky built his family on military grit,
the story of our next cow, Rice Crest to South
Wind Cay, starts with simple... everyday neighborly
kindness. It's known in the breed as the rice
crest phenomenon. Fred Rice's story is the epitome
of the farming community. He's just doing chores
for a sick neighbor, Jay Knepper, who is recovering
from surgery. Fred steps in to milk the cows
to keep the farm running. And while Fred is standing
in that parlor day after day observing the cattle,
he notices something. There's a specific group
of about five cows that are just, as he puts
it, milking their heads off. They are aggressively
outproducing everything else in the barn. Fred
looks at the pedigrees and realizes they are
all related. So when Knepper later decides to
sell his heifers, Fred and his brother buy one
of the relatives, a cow named Terrace Lane Ideal
Star. And here is the defining detail of the
case story. When Terrace Lane Ideal Star is classified
as a two -year -old, the classifier scores her
GP76. Now for anyone familiar with the 1 to 100
scale, A good plus 76 is, well, it's nothing
to brag about. It's aggressively average. Yeah.
It means she lacked the aesthetic sweep, the
perfect utter attachment, the angularity that
the industry prized. But underneath that average
exterior, she was quietly building a genetic
powerhouse. Generations later, that modest maternal
line produces Rice Crest Southwind K. And K absolutely
shatters the protein records for the breed. It's
like scouting a baseball player who has this
terribly awkward, ugly swing. The mechanics look
entirely wrong. All the elite scouts with their
clipboards walk right past him, shaking their
heads. But somehow he hits a home run every single
time he steps to the plate. Exactly. The establishment
ignores him because he lacks flash, but he's
the one actually putting points on the board.
That is the exact dynamic that played out. The
elite sale selectors, the guys picking cows for
the high -end auctions, walked right past the
rice -crest cattle. They dismissed them as just
good milk bulls, implying they lacked true elite
status. But the biology couldn't be ignored.
Kay put three dozen of her sons into AI service.
And in 1999, She achieved something completely
unprecedented. She put three sons, Lance, Brett,
and Marshall, on the top 100 TPI list simultaneously.
Her son Lance was the number one bull in the
brood. Let's remind folks about the TPI, or Total
Performance Index. It is the ultimate formula
the industry uses to rank genetics. It combines
milk, fat, protein, butter confirmation, and
health traits into one single number. To have
three sons from one cow in the top 100 of that
fiercely competitive list is mind -boggling.
And the ultimate vindication for this ugly duckling
family came later with a bull named Sandy Valley
Bolton. Bolton, a direct descendant of Kay's
line, ranked number one on the TPI list in 2006
-2007, essentially defining an entire decade
of dairy breeding. When you look at the mechanics
of the Kay story, it effectively settles the
eternal type versus production debate. It proves
that you cannot dismiss a cow simply because
she doesn't fit the aesthetic ideal of the moment.
The critics who mocked Kay's modest type scores
had absolutely nothing to say when Bolton's sons
and daughters took over the global herd. The
profound lesson there, for anyone listening in
their barn right now, is to look much harder
at what you already own. The most valuable cow
in your herd might be the unassuming, aggressively
average -looking one in the back corner, who
just quietly eats her feed, breeds back on the
first try, and pays the bills every single month.
But recognizing that value requires trusting
your own eyes over the industry consensus. Which
transitions us perfectly into our final two matriarchs,
Pala and Hiawatha. Because the dairy industry
has a deeply ingrained, very dangerous habit
of ignoring greatness if it doesn't fit the mathematical
formula of the day. The index wars. The industry
gets so entirely obsessed with the spreadsheet,
so focused on the algorithm, that they completely
lose sight of the living, breathing animal standing
in the straw. Our next two families show exactly
what happens when breeders stubbornly back their
own vision against the institutional gatekeepers.
Let's talk about Windy Knoll View Ultimate Pala.
Jim and Nina Burdett started their operation
in 1974 on a rented farm. Capital was tight,
so their strategy was entirely unique. They actively
sought out and bought the cows that other men
didn't want. They bought animals with minor defects.
Maybe they were slow milkers or had a slightly
off -kilter udder. But the Burdetts had a strict
rule. The cow had to have massive compensating
features, specifically broad rumps, strong frames,
and immense chest width. They were playing the
long game, they were securing the structural
frame, knowing they could use strategic mating
to fix the specific defects in the next generation.
Their primary tool for fixing those bad udders
was the legendary bull round oak rag apple elevation.
But the real magic happened when Jim Burdett
attended World Dairy Expo and saw the daughters
of a bull named Quality Ultimate completely sweep
a show. He rushes back to the farm, uses Quality
Ultimate on a strong -framed cow named Pauline,
and the result is Pella. Paula was a biological
powerhouse. By the 1991 Pennsylvania Spring Show,
she did something virtually unheard of in show
ring history. She furnished four class -winning
daughters, sired by four different bulls. They
won the produce of damn class, the damn daughter
class, and the best three females. She eventually
produced 18 excellent offspring. But here is
where the conflict with the establishment begins.
The AI industry. the corporate sire analysts
whose job is to buy young bulls to sell semen
to the masses. They look at Paula's sons, and
they uniformly reject them. Why? Because the
industry was on an absolute index binge, and
the algorithm hated the quality ultimate genetics
in her pedigree. The analysts looked at the spreadsheet,
saw a predicted transmitting ability they didn't
like, and completely ignored the living, breathing,
utterly dominant family standing right in front
of them. It perfectly illustrates the danger
of managing biology entirely by spreadsheet.
The sire analysts were myopically focused only
on the sire stack, the bulls on the top half
of the pedigree. What they completely missed
was the immense power of Pala's maternal line.
Her maternal line was 21 generations deep, tracing
continuously all the way back to a cow imported
from Holland in 1884. A 21 -generation deep foundation.
So how do the Burdettes bypass these corporate
gatekeepers? They team up with a rogue thinker
named Dick Witter at Taurus Service. Together,
they create a grassroots marketing pitch called
My Three Grandsons. They take three bulls, popular,
promote, and powerhouse, all grandsons of Pala.
and market them directly to everyday farmers
based entirely on the undeniable power of that
maternal line. They totally sidestepped the rigid
sire analysts. And the campaign was a massive
success, because everyday dairymen intuitively
understood that a 21 -generation deep maternal
line was a significantly safer bet than whatever
volatile genomic index was popular that particular
month. It proved that sometimes the long view
is the only reliable view. Which brings us to
our final matriarch, and perhaps the most radical
long view of all, the Iowatha family. We are
swinging back into the realm of high finance
and huge money, but the origin story starts in
the most humble, analytical way possible. It
starts at a kitchen table in New York. A visionary
breeder named Sherman Harrington sits down with
Bill Weeks, the man who developed the AAA mating
system. We need to explain the AAA system because
it's totally different from index breeding. Animal
Analysis Associates isn't about chasing the highest
numbers for milk or type. It's about structural
compatibility. It analyzes the physical qualities
of a cow, whether she is too sharp, too round,
too frail, or too coarse, and matches her with
a bull whose physical form counteracts her specific
weaknesses. It is literally structural engineering
applied to biology. Exactly. And Harrington,
utilizing this system, lays out a philosophy
that probably sounded utterly crazy to the fast
-paced industry at the time. His focus was entirely
on extreme longevity. He believed a cow wasn't
at her best as a two -year -old or even as a
four -year -old. He believed a cow reached her
absolute biological peak at 10 years of age.
10 years old. In an industry that is constantly
trying to turn generations faster and faster,
pushing heifers to calve earlier and produce
more immediately, Harrington is saying, no, let's
build an animal that peaks a full decade after
she's born. And that radical patience creates
Shermar Highmark Hiawatha. She produces almost
35 ,000 pounds of milk as a six -year -old, a
massive record. The family gets featured on the
cover of the Holstein World magazine, and suddenly
the big money comes calling. The syndicates take
notice. Bream Street Holsteins buys in. Then
Hiawatha herself is sold to Mansion Valley for
$280 ,000. Her daughter, Niagara, goes to the
designer fashion sale and sells for the exact
same staggering price, $280 ,000. And the market
fever just keeps climbing. Hiawatha's granddaughter,
a cow named Pocahontas, sells as a two -year
-old for an unbelievable $530 ,000 to a banker
from Connecticut. Half a million dollars for
one single cow. Now, I have to stop and challenge
this dynamic. We talked about the 1980s investor
craze earlier and the total bankruptcy and chaos
it caused for Jack Stuckey. When you see a cow
selling for $530 ,000 to a Wall Street banker,
does that kind of money inevitably ruin the breed?
Or does it actually serve a vital purpose by
elevating the absolute best genetics so they
can reach places they normally wouldn't, like
massive herds in Japan and California? That is
a crucial question about the role of outside
capital in agriculture. The capital itself is
agnostic. It simply amplifies whatever system
it touches. In Stuckey's case, the money created
a speculative bubble that burst. But in the Hiawatha
case, we see a golden synergy between biology
and capital. The money acted as a hyper -accelerant.
Walk us through how that synergy actually functioned.
It worked in three distinct phases. First, Sherwin
-Harrington's quiet kitchen table AYA philosophy
created the actual biological product, the immense
longevity, the deep frame, the capacity to milk
for a decade. Second, the massive investor checks
from Wall Street bankers provided the capital
required to aggressively flush those cows via
embryo transfer and rapidly transport those elite
genetics across the globe. And then the final,
most important piece of the puzzle. Every day,
Midwestern dairymen bought into those lines and
pushed the biology to its absolute physical limits.
Right. A dairyman named Don Mayer in Wisconsin
takes a Hiawatha descendant, Golden Oak's Mark
Prudence, into his herd. And under his meticulous
daily management, she sets a world record. 62
,981 pounds of milk in 365 days on three times
a day milking. Nearly 63 ,000 pounds of milk
in one year. It is the perfect agricultural ecosystem.
The visionary breeder engineers the cow, the
investor capital scales and moves the genetics,
and the master gerryman realizes the ultimate
potential of the animal. When Don Mayer was later
asked to compare the Hiawathas to all the other
great cow families he had worked with, he said
they were unequivocally his favorite. Why? Because
just like the Roxies, they consistently produced
massive frames and delivered massive milk. They
fulfilled the biological promise. Okay, let's
take a collective breath here. We've just sprinted
through decades of agricultural history. We've
looked at seven dramatically different cows.
We've seen Roxy's perfect photo shoot, Delia's
35 -year slow burn, Black Rose's accidental birth
from a dry nitrogen tank. We've seen Chief Faith's
military grit. Kay's hidden protein explosion,
Pala's 21 -generation deep defiance of the algorithm,
and Hiawatha's half -million -dollar proof of
longevity. So what does this all mean for you,
the listener, whether you are managing a herd
of 500 cows or just trying to navigate your own
long -term business decisions? When you synthesize
the data across all these varying environments,
what ties these seven matriarchs together isn't
just that they had excellent classification scores
or gold medal sons. It's the profound conviction
of the human standing behind them. It's a few
rogue breeders who firmly believed and proved
that the depth of the maternal line matters infinitely
more than whatever the popular Sire Index dictates
on any given day. It's the absolute refusal to
be a slave to the spreadsheet. Genomic indexes
change constantly. The mathematical formulas
are tweaked. The baselines shift. The economic
weights given to protein versus fat are altered.
The hot, heavily marketed bull that everyone
is chasing in 2024 will likely be completely
obsolete and forgotten by 2027. but cow families.
Deep, proven cow families are genetic insurance.
Genetic insurance. That is exactly what it is.
A truly great brood cow acts as an anchor. She
will throw excellent, highly productive daughters
no matter who she is mated to, whether you breed
her to a massive strength bull, a refined dairy
bull, a chart -topping index leader, or an ugly
production sire. The maternal line ensures the
structural and productive integrity of the offspring.
The matriarch protects the herd. So if you're
listening to this right now, look at your own
foundation. Look at your own barn or your own
business. Are you constantly chasing the latest
flash in the pan metric? Are you buying into
the hype of the algorithm? Or are you, like Bob
Snow, quietly taking the time to build a rock
solid foundation that will still be producing
undeniable trouble -free results 40 years from
now? It requires immense discipline to ignore
the noise of the marketplace and trust the evidence
of your own eyes. It really does. Thank you all
for joining us on this extensive deep dive into
the hidden matriarchs of the dairy industry.
It's been an incredible journey through history,
biology, economics, and sheer undeniable human
stubbornness. But before we sign off, I want
to leave you with a final thought to mull over
as you go about your day. Today, modern genomics
can map a living creature's exact biological
potential from a hair follicle before it is even
born. We can predict milk yield, utter depth
and productive life with incredible mathematical
precision. But as we rely more and more on these
incredibly sophisticated algorithms to tell us
what is valuable, we have to ask a hard question.
Can a spreadsheet ever measure the sheer biological
will of a cow recovering from having three gallons
of sand removed from her stomach? Can index ever
account for the incredible history -altering
luck of a dry semen tank? As science advances
and our engineering of biology gets sharper,
what invisible traits of the maternal line, the
grit, the fight, the unquantifiable will to survive
and produce, are we still failing to measure
today? You started this deep dive thinking about
clean spreadsheets and precise engineering, but
we leave you in the beautiful, messy, unpredictable
waters of biology. Something to chew on until
next time. Keep exploring, trust your own eyes,
and thanks for taking this deep dive. Turn the
volume high For the icons of the ages That never
will die From the show ring thunder to The quiet
strength they knew Hear their stories now Coming
right on through Legends live here.